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China countered President Donald Trump’s across-the-board tariffs on Chinese products with tariffs on select U.S. imports Tuesday, as well as announcing an antitrust investigation into Google and other trade measures.U.S. tariffs on products from Canada and Mexico were also set to go into effect Tuesday before Trump agreed to a 30-day pause as the two countries acted to appease his concerns about border security and drug trafficking. Trump planned to talk with Chinese President Xi Jinping in the next few days.The Chinese response was “measured,” said John Gong, a professor at the University of International Business and Economics in Beijing. “I don’t think they want the trade war escalating,” he said. “And they see this example from Canada and Mexico and probably they are hoping for the same thing.”This isn’t the first round of tit-for-tat actions between the two countries. China and the U.S. had engaged in a trade war in 2018 when Trump raised tariffs on Chinese goods and China responded in kind.This time, analysts said, China is much better prepared to counter, with the government announcing a slew of measures that cut across different sectors of the economy, from energy to individual U.S. companies. Counter tariffs China said it would implement a 15% tariff on coal and liquefied natural gas products as well as a 10% tariff on crude oil, agricultural machinery, and large-engine cars imported from the U.S. The tariffs would take effect next Monday.“The U.S.’s unilateral tariff increase seriously violates the rules of the World Trade Organization,” the State Council Tariff Commission said in a statement. “It is not only unhelpful in solving its own problems, but also damages normal economic and trade cooperation between China and the U.S.”The impact on U.S. exports may be limited. Though the U.S. is the biggest exporter of liquid natural gas globally, it does not export much to China. In 2023, the U.S. exported 173,247 million cubic feet of LNG to China, representing about 2.3% of total natural gas exports, according to the U.S. Energy Information Administration.China imported only about 700,000 cars overall last year, and the leading importers are from Europe and Japan, said Bill Russo, the founder of the Automobility Limited consultancy in Shanghai. Further export controls on critical minerals China announced export controls on several elements critical to the production of modern high-tech products.They include tungsten, tellurium, bismuth, molybdenum, and indium, many of which are designated as critical minerals by the U.S. Geological Survey, meaning they are essential to U.S. economic or national security that have supply chains vulnerable to disruption.The export controls are in addition to ones China placed in December on key elements such as gallium.“They have a much more developed export control regime,” Philip Luck, an economist at the Center for Strategic and International Studies and former State Department official, said at a panel discussion on Monday.“We depend on them for a lot of critical minerals: gallium, germanium, graphite, a host of others,” he said. “So . . . they could put some significant harm on our economy.”The response from China appears calculated and measured, said Stephen Dover, chief market strategist and head of the Franklin Templeton Institute, a financial research firm. However, he said, the world is bracing for further impact.“A risk is that this is the beginning of a tit-for-tat trade war, which could result in lower GDP growth everywhere, higher U.S. inflation, a stronger dollar and upside pressure on U.S. interest rates,” Dover said. U.S. companies also impacted In addition, China’s State Administration for Market Regulation said Tuesday it is investigating Google on suspicion of violating antitrust laws. The announcement did not mention the tariffs but came just minutes after Trump’s 10% tariffs on China were to take effect.It is unclear how the probe will affect Google’s operations. The company has long faced complaints from Chinese smartphone makers over its business practices surrounding the Android operating system, Gong said.Otherwise, Google has a limited presence in China, and its search engine is blocked in the country like most other Western platforms. Google exited the Chinese market in 2010 after refusing to comply with censorship requests from the Chinese government and following a series of cyberattacks on the company.Google did not immediately comment.The Commerce Ministry also placed two American companies on an unreliable entities list: PVH Group, which owns Calvin Klein and Tommy Hilfiger, and Illumina, which is a biotechnology company with offices in China. The listing could bar them from engaging in China-related import or export activities and from making new investments in the country.Beijing began investigating PVH Group in September last year over “improper Xinjiang-related behavior” after the company allegedly boycotted the use of Xinjiang cotton.Putting these U.S. companies on the unreliable entities list is “alarming” because it shows that the Chinese government is using the list to pressure U.S. companies to take a side, said George Chen, managing director for The Asia Group, a Washington D.C.-headquartered business policy consultancy.“It’s almost like telling American companies, what your government is doing is bad, you need to tell the government that if you add more tariffs or hurt U.S.-China relations at the end of the day it’ll backfire on American companies,” Chen said. Wu reported from Bangkok. AP writers Zen Soo in Hong Kong and Christopher Bodeen in Taipei, Taiwan, contributed to this report. Ken Moritsugu and Huizhong Wu, Associated Press
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E-Commerce
Shares in music streamer Spotify (NYSE: SPOT) are up nearly 9% in premarket trading as of the time of this writing after the company reported fourth-quarter earnings results for its fiscal 2024. It was a quarter that ended the music streamer’s first full year of profitability. And saw many important metrics increase by double-digit percentages. Heres what you need to know about Spotify’s Q4 2024 earnings. SPOT Q4 2024 earnings by the numbers Spotify posted several investor-pleasing metrics today. Here are the main highlights of Spotifys Q4 2024: Monthly Active Users (MAUs): 675 million (up 12% Y/Y) Premium subscribers: 263 million (up 11% Y/Y) Total Revenue: 4.2 billion (up 16% Y/Y) Spotify says its 35 million additional MAUs was the largest Q4 MAU addition in the companys history and ended up exceeding the companys internal forecasts by 10 million. Additionally, its Premium Subscriber additions of 11 million were 3 million more than the company forecasted. But perhaps the best news from Spotifys results was that it reported its first full year of operating income profitability. Operating income in Q4 reached 477 million, and for the 2024 fiscal year totaled 1.4 billion. Spotify stock jumps After announcing its Q4 2024 results, Spotify shares jumped in premarket trading on the New York Stock Exchange. As of the time of this writing, SPOT shares are currently up almost 9% to above $596 per share. Year-to-date, SPOT shares were already up over 21% as of yesterdays closing share price of $549. Spotify’s stock is trading significantly higher than where it was just a few years ago. In October 2023, the companys share price was trading below $75 per share. But since then, it has steadily risen and, since mid-2024, has experienced a resurgence. Much of that resurgence can be attributed to the efficiency efforts the company has adopted in recent years, notes Yahoo Finance. Those efforts have included reducing costs through layoffs and shifts away from its beleaguered podcasts strategy. Looking ahead to 2025 Spotify is the largest music streamer in the world in terms of monthly active users. Its next closest competitor is Apple Music. But if Apples recent efforts are any indication, the iPhone maker could be gunning hard to overtake Spotify in 2025. Yesterday, Apple announced that it is offering new Apple Music subscribers six months of the music streaming service for just $2.99. That equates to less than 50 cents a month and shows the financial hit Apple is willing to take if it means gaining some of Spotifys hundreds of millions of current subscribers, who currently pay $11.99 a month for individual plans. Spotify did not address Apples promotion in its Q4 results today, but the companys CEO, Daniel Ek, said he was very excited about 2025 and [feels] really good about where we are as both a product and as a business. We will continue to place bets that will drive long term impact, increasing our speed while maintaining the levels of efficiency we achieved last year, Ek noted. Its this combination that will enable us to build the best and most valuable user experience, grow sustainably and deliver creativity to the world. As for the first part of Spotifys 2025, the company has issued a Q1 forecast in which it sees itself adding 3 million MAUs for the current quarter as well as another 2 million net new premium subscribers.
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E-Commerce
Over the past few weeks, both Meta and Microsoft have announced that they will be conducting company wide performance-based layoffs. Meta even put a marketing spin on the practice of getting rid of employees based on poor performance, calling it non-regrettable attrition. On the surface this may make sense: leaders want to ensure every individual at the company is making an impact in some way and contributing to the bottom line. And heres the biggest mistake that can occur during performance-based layoffs: deciding to embark on this process assuming that there are well-defined goals and metrics for individuals, and a clear understanding of what good versus poor performance looks like. If you have been asked to be involved in executing performance-based layoffs, consider the following: Look at factors beyond the final performance rating Many leaders assign a number, on a scale of 1 to 5, aligning to a forced bell curve when it comes to assessing the performance of their talent. And we must take the time to consider factors and details beyond the final performance rating that was given to the individual. There can be so many details behind what can be perceived as a low rating or poor performance that need to be looked at. Consider the following: Is this person new to their role? I once worked at a company that had the following rule: Individuals who were new or six months into their role automatically received not fully meeting expectationsan automatic 2 rating regardless of how they were actually doing on the job How many new managers has this person had in the past year? Who rated this individual and are they still at the company? Does the most recent manager actually understand what this individual does and works on? Is this the first low performance rating they have received? What was their rating during their last review? Is there a pattern of this individual not performing or is this an outlier? Was this person on any type of leave? I once worked at another company where it was uncovered that a number of women, including myself, were given the lowest performance rating when we were all out on maternity leave. On the other hand, you can have individuals receiving high performance ratings because they are well-liked or friends with the CEO, but have actually not achieved their goals. Look beyond the number assigned to an individual to assess whether or not they are actually performing on the job. Review self-evaluations versus the managers evaluations When leading performance-based layoffs, take a look at the documentation thats available from the most recent performance cycle. The truth about performance often lies in between an individuals self-evaluation versus the managers evaluation: what the individual thinks they achieved versus what the manager believes they have achieved. Here are some things to look for in the reviews: Where do the reviews overlap? Are there any distinct differences? Where do you see subjectivity in the managers review? Do you spot any potential bias? Is the individual taking accountability for any performance gaps and sharing what they learned? Is there a team project that failed that somehow this one individual is being unfairly judged for? Dont wait to deal with performance issues We must hold leaders accountable who dont deal with performance issues. I have worked with too many leaders who don’t want to take responsibility for someone who is not performing on the job. Instead, they will try to eliminate their role, move them to another team and make them someone elses problem, put them on a performance improvement plan, or create a difficult working environment to get them to resign. And finally, they wait for a company wide performance layoff so they dont have to intervene. If you have chosen to lead other people, its a responsibility and a privilege. You have to teach them how to do their job, coach them through mistakes, and give them detailed feedback when they arent able to complete tasks. When you decide to label someone a low performer, its time to self reflect on what role you played in this situation. If someone cant be upskilled to do the job, is unhappy in the job, or cant achieve the clear metrics of the role, your responsibility is to help them move on to what they are meant to do next. And to deal with this quickly, and not wait for an entire year for company wide performance-based layoffs. Leaders who arent held accountable for their teams poor performance should also have that reflected in their review and it should impact their compensation. While on the surface performance-based layoffs may sound like a good idea, make sure you are evaluating individuals fairly. Then you can make the decision if they should stay or move on externally to what they are meant to do next in their career.
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E-Commerce
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